Volume 7, Number 3
Jul 1983

Grants

The Research Libraries Group (RLG) has been awarded a total of $1,350,000 by NEH and the Mellon Foundation for cooperative preservation microfilming of U.S. imprints and Americana published between 1878 and 1900. Most publications of this period are now too brittle to be maintained in their original form. To avoid duplication of effort, each of the seven RLG members participating in the project will systematically survey a different subject field in their collections and evaluate every U.S. monograph they find within it from the period. If curatorial judgment deems a volume worthy of preservation; if no other film is located; and if the item is suitable for filming, it will be filmed. Among the by-products expected from the project are 1) a more realistic estimate of what has already been preserved, 2) more accurate data on the cost of preservation microfilming and relevant bibliographic control, and 3) a test of new preservation-related features in RLIN (the Research Libraries Information Network, RLG's automated library information system).

RLG project participants are New York Public Library, Yale, Brown, Columbia and the universities of Michigan, Minnesota and California (Berkeley).

The Research Libraries Group, Inc., is a corporation owned and operated by its members. The partnership was founded in 1974 to provide a framework within which these institutions could seek long-term solutions to the chronic fiscal, staffing, and support problems encountered by research libraries in the collecting, organizing, preserving, and providing of information.

Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, has been awarded a second Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA) Title I grant to extend the Illinois Cooperative Conservation Program (ICCP) into a second phase. Phase 2 focuses on training of library staff in simple book repair procedures by conducting 20 workshops throughout Illinois. Each workshop is a full day long and accommodates 1S people, for a total of 300.

The Intermuseum Conservation Association is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a third three-year grant of $270,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for advanced programs in conservation. These nationally recognized programs include graduate training, curatorial seminars, staff expertise, continued development of an information retrieval system, and research.

The University of Connecticut has received a $7,500 grant from the Tinker Foundation to fund phased preservation of a newly acquired collection of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and government documents dealing with Puerto Rico's history and cultural development.

The Research Libraries of New York Public Library have been granted $1.25 million to aid both long and short range efforts in materials preservation. The Mellon Foundation has given $750,000 to help endow the expansion of the library's preservation efforts and a $500,000 bequest from the estate of Katherine B. Hadley will be used to endow the current operations of the library's Conservation Division. (Endowment is a way to ensure the continuity of funding for conservation, which otherwise is likely to be cut back in hard times.)

The New York State Archives and the New York State Library have announced a series of four workshops as part of their new Conservation Administration Training and Planning Project. The goal of the project is to improve programs for the preservation of New York's documentary heritage and of other important and endangered research materials in New York. The project is partially funded by a grant of $52,540 from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Each conservation administration workshop will last 3-1/2 days and will accommodate 25 participants, whose workshop expenses will be paid by project funds. To be eligible, participants' administrative responsibilities should include preservation policy or the allocation of resources for this activity. The first workshop will begin October 31; others will be in February, May and September 1984. For information contact Conservation Administration Project, c/o New York State Archives, Room 10A46, Cultural Education Center, Albany, NY 12230 (518/474-1195).